News

Mastodons, Snowmass items to be featured in Denver museum show

A painting by Jan Vriesen, now hanging near offices at the Denver Museum of Nature & Science, imagines Ziegler Reservoir of 120,000 years ago, where mastodons, giant bison and giant sloths roamed.

Next month, when "Mammoths and Mastodons: Titans of the Ice Age" opens, the public will be able to see that painting and remains of actual ice-age megafauna unearthed two winters ago from the lake near Snowmass.

On Wednesday, curators were assembling an American mastodon, part of the Field Museum's traveling exhibit, which opens here Feb. 15.

"It's amazing that this thing happened while this was coming to the museum," said Ian Miller a museum curator.

Although the public won't be able to see the majority of the Snowmass findings — scientists are still handling them — they will be able to see iconic animals, including "Ziggy," a giant ground sloth, and a variety of other objects such as wood, insects and plant materials that demonstrate the biodiversity that existed in ice-age Snowmass.

"We're trying to tell the whole story about this ecosystem. That's what's surprising about Snowmass," Richards said. "It's not just that we found a lot of cool stuff, but that we have the complete story of the ice-age ecosystem at different times."

Miller said the team of 45 scientists working on the thousands of specimens collected from the dig expects to release its findings this summer. He said it may be early next year before they are published.

Although it was not collected in Colorado, an American mastodon that will be displayed in the Snowmass segment of the exhibit is a fitting piece because the dig is the largest mastodon site in the world, Richards said.

"Even though the first animal found at Snowmass was a mammoth, we have more mastodons there," Richards said. "The Hyde Park mastodon is the most complete mastodon found in the U.S."